Karnitschnig is Politico’s chief Europe correspondent.When The Jerusalem Post asked about the allegations of antisemitism on Twitter, Alexander Kühn, one of three Spiegel journalists who authored the article, wrote: “We reject the allegation of antisemitism. It is important to mention the Jewish family, as we will write later in the text that Mr. Piatov received antisemitic threats. He himself addressed the family [topic] in his book.”Anja zum Hingst, a spokeswoman for Der Spiegel, sent the same reply as Kühn to the Post on Friday. Post queries on Twitter to the two additional Spiegel reporters, Isabell Hülsen and Anton Rainer, went unanswered. Hülsen retweeted Kühn’s tweet, denying antisemitism.Detailed Post queries to the Spiegel authors about the additional allegations of modern antisemitism in the article went largely unanswered.Zum Hingst wrote to the Post on Saturday, saying the “claim is false” from the Bild that the “Spiegel asked during its research whether Mr. Piatov worked at the Israeli embassy. There has been no such request.” Bild journalist Björn Stritzel, who has written extensively on German antisemitism, commented on Twitter: “[Spiegel] absolutely wanted to tell an antisemitic lie about the homeless Ahasver who becomes a court Jew,” in connection with the Spiegel section on Piatov leaving “Leningrad at the age of one” to Germany and locating a “journalistic home” at Bild.Stritzel’s criticism directed at Der Spiegel suggests that the authors exploited the idea of the wandering Jew, or Ahasver, to create an antisemitic ideology to discredit the Bild and Piatov’s journalism.Antisemitic fear of the “wandering Jew” has a long history in Germany. US academic Paul Lawrence Rose, who is a leading expert on radical German antisemitism, wrote that the Ahasver myth spreads the ideology that “ordinary Jews of the social environment were imbued with a supernatural demonic significance.”German national-security journalist Florian Flade also weighed in on the Spiegel row on Twitter, saying: “Sorry, but why is it important to mention that Piatov comes from a ‘Jewish family’? And what is this ‘emigrated from... given home’? Completely unnecessary. Journalism.”The controversy electrified Twitter, including one commentator who frequently monitors antisemitism in Germany, describing the Spiegel journalists as a “pack of antisemites.”In March, after the Post was the first news organization to expose allegations of antisemitism against Spiegel journalist Christoph Sydow, he walked back his description of Israel’s government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the first “Corona Dictatorship.”Der Spiegel declined to change the headline in response to Sydow’s statement that “If I wrote the text again today, I would not use the word ‘dictatorship’ again.”In 2019, Der Spiegel alleged – with echoes of a classic antisemitic conspiracy theory – that two small pro-Israel organizations are directing German Middle East policy.“Der Spiegel must officially apologize for practicing Israel-related antisemitism,” Uwe Becker, commissioner to combat antisemitism in the state of Hesse, said at the time. “The article contains all the stereotypes that constitute antisemitism and is an example of how deep these though patterns are in mainstream society.”There’s been a long-running discussion about whether Der Spiegel is fundamentally antisemitic.That debate is now over. This week, the magazine randomly describes a German reporter at the rival Bild as Jewish, compares him to a dog (“bloodhound”)...1/2 https://t.co/Q51w9ff0Bc
— Matthew Karnitschnig (@MKarnitschnig) May 30, 2020